


Imperceptible Affections

by Drachegirl14



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Gen, References to Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 02:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drachegirl14/pseuds/Drachegirl14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He pondered how, when his eyesight was so sharp that he never missed a detail and he hit every shot, he had missed this blind girl. Hawkeye/OC</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imperceptible Affections

**Drachegirl14: Hello! Welcome to my first Avengers story.**

**This is a testing chapter – a maiden voyage if you will. I've never attempted something like this, so please bear with me. If you guys like it enough I may continue it.**

**Summary: He pondered how, when his eyesight was so sharp that he never missed a detail and he hit every shot, he had missed this blind girl.**

**Rating: T**

**Pairing: Clint/OC**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Avengers or Hawkeye or SHIELD or any of that. I only own Erin and her husband, their businesses, and the plotline for this story.**

* * *

She was here again.

Agent Clint Barton entered the upper floor bar of the hidden club with the usual familiarity, his leather jacket slung casually over a simple black t-shirt and his old black jeans and combat boots. The sniper strode across the linoleum floor that was the same color as the night sky outside, making almost no sound as he did so, and he wove his way through the drunk men and women laughing and playing pool or cards at the tables under weak naked lightbulbs, slowly letting the last mission roll off his shoulders in this place of low lights and smoky air. Down the spiral staircase on the other side of the room, on the polished wooden floor of the basement, were dark red lights and flashing strobes that highlighted the writhing crowd who were little more than slaves to the heavy muffled bass beat that seemed to synchronize with his heart rate. Couples were groping and giving in to their baser desires in the dark corners both upstairs and down, but he ignored them, his sharp eyes trained on the woman who was sitting at the end of the gleaming oak bar, nursing a drink that was a rich amber color in the somewhat obscured light. She wore a white baggy knit sweater this evening, and baggy black pants over plain white tennis shoes. Her dark hair was pulled out of her face in its usual messy bun, sightless milky brown eyes staring at nothing particular as she stirred her drink with a small black straw.

She didn't seem that special, but she had become a weirdly normal fixation of this part of his life – not because she was beautiful (she was rather unremarkable in the grand scheme of things and certainly wasn't anything compared to his last target; he wasn't being mean just honest) but because it didn't matter how long his missions were, Clint knew that he would walk in the door and find her sitting here in that same spot. He would return to this club, where the alcohol was good and sometimes the food was decent, where he could let the mission roll off him; even though he was a killer, an assassin and he had no problem with that, sometimes a lingering tension would keep him from sleeping. But somehow, someway, she was always here when he showed up, and she would always find some way to distract him and get him to relax, to release said tension.

Clint had discovered this place when he had begun to roam the streets at night, before he returned to base to try and get some rest. Located down an alleyway and on the first floor of one of the older and broken down buildings nearer to the outskirts of the city, Hal's Club wasn't necessarily what he would call trendy, but it did have its own attraction of nightlife. It allowed him to let the adrenaline of the assassination missions SHIELD sent him on to escape into the air, away from him, and he would usually have a drink and then leave. His first time here, he had sat next to this woman, and she had been so startled by his presence next to her that she had spilled her drink. Delicate small tapered fingers had reached, with alarm, toward the napkin holder and fumbled with it, apologies leaving her mouth as she managed to get out a few of the cheap brown paper napkins and mop up the spill. She had bought him a drink in apology and afterwards somehow always managed to make a bit of small talk with him every time he visited.

Six months later and he found he enjoyed the small talk, and that gentle smile she would wear as she welcomed him back. She never asked where he vanished to, and he never told her, but she would always greet him warmly and proceed to simply speak to him, as though he were a good friend. Ironic, the sharpshooter thought as he grew closer to his goal, the seat next to her; she didn't even know his name, although he knew hers.

The woman was named Erin Griffin – a brilliant biochemist who focused her work on pheromones and hormones, seeking ways to potentially tweak the brain to develop natural resistances and potential cures to diseases in the world. She was married to billionaire Mike Richards, a business tycoon that was rumored to be ruthless, only desiring power and at this point in time, he had a finger in every major business in America. She wasn't ever seen in tabloids – usually her husband brought his PA with him to parties and galas and events, and she had firmly told Clint the last time he had been in here that she didn't care if her husband took "that whore bitchface" with him anywhere he went. "It keeps me out of the limelight so I can focus on my work," she said, and then added in an impish grin, "Aside from that, I would steal the show if I tried to dance with him as any normal wife would."

The tabloids and newspapers speculated her to be an antisocial nutjob. He knew her to be open, cynical, with a sharp wit and a tendency to hold hard to what she believed in. Being blind wasn't an obstacle to her; he was amazed at how she flipped life off when it caused the accident that took her sight and instead doubled her efforts to continue her work at her own company, a pharmaceutical place that sold her revolutionary medicines that were already showing less side-effects in the usual birth control pill than the ones sold by normal companies. He couldn't imagine having this perfect vision he did taken away from him; his sight was vitally important to his life, and the strain of having it removed would probably drive him to his knees. She simply took it in stride and refused to let life kill her zest, her passion.

And even though he knew these things about her, both gleaned through observation night after night, and through a bit of easily done information gathering, she knew nothing about him. But . . . somehow, despite this lack of knowledge (in this day and age, something very dangerous), she still spoke to him easily, as though he were just another man in a bar sharing a drink with a co-worker . . . or a friend.

Clint wasn't sure what to make of that, but as she clearly wasn't trying to kill him, and she didn't want anything from him except to talk, he didn't see a problem with continuing their association. Sure helped him unwind further.

He sat next to her in the chair to her left, and was rewarded with her usual warm smile. She turned her face towards him and nodded in greeting, "Welcome back."

He allowed a faint answering smile to slide onto his lips, despite the fact that she couldn't see it. "Still here I see. Did you even move?"

She scowled at him in a friendly way, lifting her straw from the liquid she had been stirring vigorously and pointing it at him to emphasize her next statement, "I was working in the lab all week. This was my first free night in a while, smartass."

He chuckled quietly, "Oh, my mistake."

"Damn straight," her smile was still plastered onto her lips. He allowed his eyes to scan over her, frowning when he eyed a fresh bruise under her eye covered by makeup and another bruise on the side of her stomach that flashed at him when she shifted on the stool to turn and face him completely.

It wasn't his business, but his mind whispered that she was probably abused by her husband – the wedding band seemed to taunt him as it flashed on her left hand in the lighting that bounced off the mirror at the back of the bar behind the bottles of alcohol displayed in a cluttered attraction on the wooden shelves. To distract himself from things that clearly weren't his business, he waved a hand at the portly man who served as the bartender, and a glass of a clear substance was slid down the bar, stopping neatly in front of him. Salt and a lime slice followed after it, and he found he appreciated the man's showmanship, for not a drop was spilled and nothing had stopped out of place.

Hearing the usual sound of glass against wood, the woman next to him opened her mouth and gave the humorous anecdotes of her day, delivered in her usual amused tone and splattered with her cynical dry humor that matched his own. Her body language was open and inviting, but he was partner to Black Widow – he knew body language could be faked, and only after knowing this girl for six months did he hesitantly accept that her sincerity was genuine, which was surprising given what probably happened in her home and after her accident.

Her hands moved as she talked and he let her voice wash over him, dislodging that one hard piece of something in his soul that truly allowed him to calm down and be able to get a good night's rest that evening. She was so animated, he realized, and her stubborn streak was showing through as she explained how she had to set some idiot straight who had demanded that she make a drug to enhance sexual pleasure for men (and only for men).

"I'm sorry, but he refused to take no for an answer and was just . . . ugh," she finished, her nose wrinkling in displeasure and moving some of the foundation on her face, just enough to flash the faint bruising along her left cheekbone. He eyed it for a moment before forcibly reminding himself that he really needed to keep his thoughts to himself. "So enough about me – how have you been lately?"

He'd been expecting this question. "Work kept me busy."

She snorted, "I'll say. You should put in for some vacation time, hun. Otherwise you'll be run ragged and you'll lose your job."

_Or my life_ , he thought, his lips twisting into a smirk, "I'm too good for them to lose." And he was – he was a master marksmen and probably one of the best agents SHIELD had; they couldn't afford to lose him.

His statement brought a gentle laughter from her lips, and he had to admit he liked the sound of it. "Oh man, someone's cocky."

"Just honest."

"I'm sure," she leveled him with an amused look of patience, the same kind a parent would give to their children who were trying to show off.

"What about you?" He couldn't resist asking, "When was the last time you got away from it all?"

Her expression darkened quickly before she struggled to place the pleasant mask back on her face, and he saw the whole thing. She was an open book when she spoke to him and he found her unabashed honesty and inability to hide her emotions very refreshing. He trusted his partner above all else – no one made a better team than he and Natasha, but sometimes he found her perchance to be blank and not give any emotion . . . tiring. He understood her better than most and dared to call her a friend (privately, because he knew in their line of work any personal attachment, romantic or otherwise, could be deadly), but he well knew that even he didn't truly know or understand Natasha Romanoff.

Erin's ability to wear her heart on her sleeve, while a weakness in his field, was something he had discovered he appreciated. Despite her hardships and this cold and broken and corrupt world, she had an optimism about her and the rare skill to show what she was feeling with the guts to hold true to said feelings. It was . . . relaxing . . . to just trust that what emotions flashed across her face and body language were real, were genuine, and he admitted, at least to himself silently in the confines of his own mind, that it was a nice change of pace.

"Oh, a while ago," her forced nonchalant reply broke him from his thoughts and she returned to her drink, tossing it down like a pro. He scattered a bit of salt onto his bare wrist, tossed his shot back, then licked the salt and sucked the lime slice immediately afterward. The harsh burning in his throat was soon transformed into a pleasant one, spreading through his body and he sighed through his nose, finally feeling the last vestiges of the adrenaline fade into obscurity.

"That's better, neh?" she murmured softly, her shoulders slumping slightly as though a weight had vanished from them and her visionless eyes on the glass in front of her.

"Yeah," he replied back truthfully. He looked over from his own empty glass to once more watch her as she heaved a sigh and turned back to face him on her stool.

She gave him a sad smile, one he had begun to notice was more prominent and present at the end of each of his visits here, "Guess it's time to go . . ." He never stayed long after he finished one drink – that and Erin's determination to chit-chat with him was more than enough to let the stress of any mission slip away from his soul and allow him to sink into sleep's embrace easily.

"I think so," Clint pulled out a couple of bills and threw them down next to his drink.

"I'll see you later then," she almost-whispered, and he barely heard her over the almost hypnotic thumping of the muffled bass beneath his feet and the laughing and chattering of the drunken idiots behind him. Her head lowered so her face would have been gazing at her lap, rendering his ability to see her face null and void.

He clapped a hand on her shoulder, her expression shifting to surprise as her head shot back up to face him. It was almost comical, how wide her eyes were, and he chuckled again, quietly. He hadn't ever established physical contact with her before, but this time it seemed normal. It seemed right. And she understood, her lips quirking, up into that familiar warm smile and she patted his hand once, a silent exchange of goodbye that felt natural.

As he left, he pondered how, when his eyesight was so sharp that he never missed a detail and he hit every shot, he missed this blind girl, and how she had somehow become integrated into his usual routine.


End file.
